ActiveRain Members and RainMakers - Do You Need Help?

I'm looking for AR members who feel they need some training and coaching.  There are many great trainers and classes/coaching offered out there, but they might NOT be what you're looking for and what you REALLY NEED.

Are You Serious? Are you Ready?

What are your questions or concerns about Social Media, networking online, or Blogging on this massive Real Estate community and network?  What things might you be missing that will make a difference in your efforts here? What do you want-vs-need?

After many years of working with AR members day in and day out, I have seen and heard it all, believe me.  Today I'm taking my experiences and the knowledge I've gained here to the next level. I've come up with an idea and plan for a possible solution for those who struggle in the web 2.0 arena.

I'm offering coaching classes to ALL ActiveRain members.  The design and content was built and based around the needs of those who I see challenged and struggling in the RE.net world daily.  In this case, it's a simple one-hour training and coaching call designed to educate and simplify the power and the tools of the AR network. Take advantage of my 12-16 hour days 6-7 days a week that I've spent learning and finding answers and solutions to member's challenges. 

The goal: My experience and knowledge here will save you time, and dramatically reduce your learning curve.

Are you not sure how to use Hit Router because you're not a REALTOR?  Are you lost when it comes to creating an effective signature for your posts?  Do you struggle with understanding how SEO works?  What about titles, content, and great anchor text?  Do they make a difference to the search engines?  How do you manage your time with Social Media?  Is there a Business Strategy or Plan that works?  How do you generate, cultivate, capture, and convert leads?  Are you different than the other 200K AR members?

Over the years, you've shared your questions, needs and concerns, and one by one I've been trying to help.  Now I'm going to open the "Rain" flood gates to everyone.  OK, here it comes...  what's the catch?  This coaching call is $99.00, but will be HALF OFF to any and all AR members and Rainmakers.  Why?  Because I want you to take advantage of an opportunity to get the most out of your membership and the efforts you invest here on ActiveRain. 

Remember, it's not the AR network that will make you successful, it's what YOU do with it, and how YOU use it that will make it worthy of your time, your efforts, and your financial investment.  Celebrating your "Thrill of Victory" with you is much more rewarding for me than witnessing your "Agony of Defeat!"

Call Phones from Gmail - Now We're Talking!

This is great news folks. The "Inside of the Internet World" just keeps on pushing and reaching out to connect with the "Outside World" and today, there's a new break-through demonstrating this very point.  Call phones from Gmail, I'm doing it right now as I write this. Anyone care to guess who I'm talking to?  Maybe some bonus points? haha, just kidding... the real point is that Gmail users (and those who will become Gmail users now) will love and benefit from this great new feature. 

Who ever thought we'd be "calling" someone from our "Email" box.  Cool~

Twitter has a new feature called "Fast Follow" which allows you to follow people on Twitter via SMS (short Message Service) and you don't even need to have a Twitter account to do this. I know that many Real Estate Industry professionals are still trying to get their arms around the concept of how to use Twitter effectively, but with this new feature, at least you can follow those who are posting valuable information and content for their followers.

Just text "follow + TwitterUsername" to Twitters "Fast Follow" at #40404 and you'll receive text updates from that user right on your smart phone. You may want to be selective, especially if you pay for your individual text messages on a limited phone plan.

Fast Follow seems like something that will appeal to those wanting to maximize social media advertising, but imagine all the passive non twitter users out there who want to receive information and updates from their favorite people, brands, and companies, but have no desire whatsoever to tweet themselves.

Now I know that you avid twitter users out there will instinctively want to try this out by following yourselves first to test it out, but the text message you'll get back might mess up your day and your ego along with it! lol~

Take a look and see if this is something that might work for you in your quest to get relevant content from those you believe provide it, and at the same time, see how other individuals and companies are using twitter to gain readers, followers, and grow relationships and business.

Check out the Twitter Blog for more details on their new "Fast Follow" SMS feature.  Should I tweet this too?!

Marketing and Advertising On ActiveRain - How To Create and Setup Ads

Your ActiveRain BLOG is not necessarily the best place to be marketing and advertising your goods or services to other ActiveRain members.  Promoting and marketing yourself is great but is there a more effective and efficient way than using your Blog to do it? Maybe, but you'll never know if you don't try it or know about it right?

One of my favorite quotes from Ardell DellaLoggia, another member here on ActiveRain: "Blogging is the show, not the commercial.  If you make it into a commercial, then your readers will go get a sandwich, like they do when a commercial comes on T.V." 

Advertising on ActiveRain is easy and you can set it up yourself using the built-in Advertising feature. 

   Step By Step Instructions:

1. Login to ActiveRain then click on the link located in the upper right corner of your screen.

2. On the left side of your MY HOME page, you'll see the link to "Advertise with AR" just click it~

3. To create a New Ad Campaign click thelink to begin.

The following screen will appear. 

4. All you need to do now is add the proper URL or WEB address for your Ad and then a 125x125 image for your ad.  Your image can be custom created using whatever graphics application you prefer, I use picnik.com to create some quick, easy, and free graphics with effects.  If your credit card information is not on file, you'll need to enter that as well. 

5. Once you're satisfied with your settings, click the button and you're DONE!

Be sure you don't refresh your Browser screen or hit the back button at this point.

This entire process takes less than 2 minutes not including the time it may take to create your graphic and to find your credit card.  I've spent more time in the past just trying to find my wallet and keys.  lol~

Your Ad will now appear on many of the millions of pages located through-out the AR Community.

The question you might have now is "how effective is this and will it work for me?"  There are plenty of other people using this on ActiveRain, just click on any of the Ad campaigns you see on future pages while you're browsing around.  Contact these companies or individuals to see if it's working for them? 

I'm sure they'll have no problem with you contacting them, and I'm certain they won't have a problem telling you if this is working for them or not.... I mean, why would they be continuing to do it if it wasn't?  You can also try it yourself for 30 days then drop it like a bad habit if it doesn't work for you.  Marketing and Advertising is changing the "face" of the WEB, are you getting the most from the "faces" seeing your ads?

Even "CRAZIER" was standing out there shooting this!  :-O

So what's the point of a cause if there is no affect? Does your Business really need a Fan Page and fans? Is it critical to your financial survival that you are "Liked" on Facebook? YES! But how much of the business information that you provide is being considered "great content" by fewer and fewer of your friends and fans? This video is thought provoking and fairly accurate. Do you know people using Social Media marketing in this way to massacre the masses?

Oddly enough, it's not the first video I had to watch twice to really make sense of it.

It's all about awesome quality content, and that goes for ANY social media networking site, even Facebook. Content on every site should be interesting, relevant, and valuable to your readers and target audience, not just to you. It's called social media marketing and not social media massacring. The real question? "What is Great Social Media Marketing Content?" I'll try and break that down into bite size chunks for you next... stay tuned. :-)

BTW - I loved his last line in this video, how many of us haven't received that one? lol~

The ActiveRain Featured Blog Post -

I get asked everyday about the ActiveRain Featured Blog post.  The wide variety of questions range from "Who Is Featuring The Posts" to "Why Are The Same Members Featured over and over again?"  Well, it's taken me 2 1/2 years working here to finally write a post about the infamous "Featured Blog Post!" 

Now some of you will agree, and some may disagree, (I wouldn't have it any other way) but at the end of the day, what really matters most is that you understand the process, the system, and have some compassion for the thankless position of those responsible for keeping that feature board going day in and day out.

So who, what, when, where, why, and how does this all work?

 The ActiveRain Feature Board

Are you kidding?  You really thought I was going to give up the secret?  Share the coveted recipe to KFC's Chicken?  Unveil the ancient Chinese secret that all proverbs were built upon?  Are you nuts?  You really thought it would be that easy to just come along and read a post and all of a sudden be the "all knowing" understander of the ActiveRain Featured Blog Post?  Sorry folks, I've held back this long, I'm not about to lay it all out there now and take the fun, the mystery, and all the guess work out of it.  Haha, had ya goin there for a sec eh?

The ActiveRain Feature Board is a living, breathing, ever-changing, powerful, and exciting AR feature.  It could possibly be one of the most important and exciting things about the entire ActiveRain RE Network.  Acquiring that sought after gold star and having your picture on the main AR page has been compared by some to being as exciting as having your picture on the cover of the "Rolling Stone!" 

Why is the "Feature" such a coveted "CRAZE" here on ActiveRain?  For those with an ego, it's the recognition, for others it's the potential traffic, and the added exposure.  The opportunities a featured post can create are unbelievable.  The thought and potential of getting a featured post has created some pretty crazy frenzy's.  It's also stirred up some pretty wild and crazy far-fetched ideas and posts from some of our more "voicy" ActiveRain members. One thing is for sure, this will always be a sensative and even contraversial topic.

So how do we feature posts and are the same people getting featured too often?

First off, I want to thank you (the community) for helping us refine this delicate process of selecting posts for featured status. Since the inception of the feature board, we continually strive to refine the process in which featured posts are selected. The recent addition of the 'suggest' button is our second shot at trying to put the feature board in the hands of our members.

The first shot was over two years ago and it failed as we were unable to control it from being manipulated by folks banding together and suggesting each other for features. We believe that the newest incarnation will be more successful as the shear numbers of people suggesting posts for feature has grown significantly and the ease with which someone can manipulate it has diminished.

Add in a few additional administrative controls, now we can determine who may be trying to manipulate the system, and we believe we are getting much closer to a true community decision of what merits a feature worthy post on ActiveRain.  That being said, we still have the ultimate decision on what gets featured and all posts that are suggested for feature are reviewed by our staff prior to being featured. 

(The AR Staff Moderators names will not be disclosed in this post for obvious reasons)

This sentiment has been echoed in the past, and I believe it still holds true today. There are certain members that are excellent writers. For whatever reason, and it's not because they have overtly recruited people to suggest their posts for feature, their posts get suggested for feature at a higher rate than others.  Much of it has to do with the large followings they have amassed because of the balance they have achieved in writing to consumers and also focusing on writing posts that help the community.

We have a hard time justifying penalizing these folks by keeping them off the feature board or restricting the amount of features they can have. However, I am in agreement with all members that having the same person on the feature board more than once at the same time is not the best representation of the depth of writing talent here on ActiveRain.  For this reason, we have asked our staff to be mindful of who is already on the feature board as they review the posts that have been suggested for feature.

We have also asked that they look deeper in the pool of suggested posts for members that have had very few (or no) featured posts in the past. This will help us develop the new talent on the site and allow them to amass followings that can benefit from their writing skills. We truly appreciate all our members for taking the time to voice their concerns to us, it's because of these members that ActiveRain will continue to grow and get better.

My personal ancient secret recipe for finding features

The ActiveRain Featured Blog post, just one more great example of how ActiveRain has and will continue to evolve.

It's Never Too Late to Turn Things Around - Always Give Your Best!

Today I received a support ticket from a Non-Member of Activerain.  This person was signed in as a guest and took the time to submit the following ticket to our support center.  Now I have to admit, I have seen some real doozies come in before, some I wouldn't dare make public, but this one deserves to be shared and discussed.

Have you ever had someone complain about you or your service?  Did they go out of their way to let the world know that you provided bad service or that you let them down or failed to meet their desired expectations?  With sites like Twitter, Facebook, and other Social Media platforms out there, consumers and YOU now have a voice and can be heard.  It's easy for a negative message to go out about you, your product, or even your service.

ActiveRain and the blogging platform here is no different.  This was the ticket and request I just responded to:

When I received this ticket today, it took me by surprise. Here is a person who left a comment on a members Blog post, the member just left it there, then the person came back 8 months later and wanted to leave a positive comment, redeem themselves, and have the previous comment removed. WOW!  I was totally impressed.  Not only with the request, but with the member who must have really done something right to turn this person around.  Thank you Ruby, and WAY TO GO Angeline Sackett!

This member turned things around!  Well done I say! We should always give and do our very best!

Google TV - Television On Steroids - Will it still be called television in the years ahead?

Recently, I posted the "Top 50 Google Tools for your Business" thinking there's not much more these folks at Google can do to top their latest releases of really cool products and services on the web.  Now Google is getting into the Television broadcasting business?  Not exactly, but does this mean your content might be subject to more exposure?  Your videos exposed to more traffic?  Will your expanded reach via Google TV give you the ability to generate, cultivate, capture, and convert more leads and increase your business? 

This is fascinating stuff.  We really do live in a time and space where there are no boundaries.  Where the only thing that stops or limits us is our own creativity and imaginations.  The world is evolving quickly with the implementation of all this new and exciting technology.  The future is coming faster than ever before and the amount of information at our fingertips is simply unimaginable. 

I remember when TV was just for entertainment.  Google is onto something here.  As a child, I recall waking up in the middle of the night next to our 1960 RCA black and white TV, only to hear that high pitched sound and see that old familiar test pattern on the screen.  It actually use to frighten me.  Now my kids, and their kids will be watching my Youtube videos on their Big Screen TV's.

Content really is king! It always has been, and it always will be.  Is your content ready for TV?  Will Google TV be as successful for entertainment as it has been for the Internet as a search engine?  Will this be the next biggest thing since the iPhone, Facebook, and sliced Bread?  I always wonder where these things will go, and how they will impact or change the world as we know it.  If anyone has the ability to change the world quickly using new technology, I'd have to say it would be Google! So will there now be SEO for television? :-O

Last week I was fortunate enough to get away for a couple days to take my kids and visit their Grandpa for his 85th surprise birthday party in Arizona.  It had been 8 long years since my 3 boys had seen there Gramps, so this was a great surprise and fun for us all.  I won't bore you with all the mushy and sobby details, but I did want to share this video with you of my father playing the piano, possibly the very last time, and it was such a blessing to have it caught this on film.  Somehow I think he must have known this, and so he performed this song called "MORE" magnificently. 

So no tutorial today, no instructions or "How To" do this or that, just a simple video of Dad on his piano, with all his grand kids, son, and friends gathered around to wish him a very special 85th birthday. He is the oldest living Andersohn on the planet and he's quite proud of that. As you watch him play this song, keep in mind that this man played and entertained his entire life for thousands, maybe even millions. Now, just for a select few.

He has suffered and survived many illnesses, has only 1/4 of a stomach left, has arthritis in all his fingers, and is being treated for Parkinson's disease on top of his battle with cancer.  He hasn't played this piano for many years, but you would never know it by his demonstration of passion and love for the keys that's shown in this video. I hope you enjoy it, my father...  Gunner Andersohn at the Piano.

Happy Birthday Dad, you made it to 85!  I am proud of you and honored to be your son.  Your gift of music has now been handed down three generations and is still giving great joy and happiness to others this very day.  My gift back to you is sharing this song with all my friends and family here, so that your talents and music can live on forever. Thank you for sharing this very special day and this song with your family, your friends, and now with the rest of the world.

Musically Yours,
Happy Birthday, I love you Dad!